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Reading The Pictures is dedicated to the analysis of news photos and media images.

April 17, 2009

A Rather Troubling Newswire Image On The Day Obama Releases Bush Interrogation Memos

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Yesterday’s release of those Bush Administration interrogation memos has caused an unusual offering of file photos to be distributed to the newswire.
I’m surprised I never saw this one before. Shades of FEMA ’05, what the image depicts is an “improvised” accounting of detainees recorded on a plywood wall who had been treated at the now-abandoned hospital facility at Gitmo’s Camp X-Ray.

Excuse my fury (and my nomination of the image as symbolic), but was the excuse here — as exemplified by the defense offered by the director of national intelligence at the end of the NYT memos story — that crude measures were necessary to prevent another 9/11 style attack?

In this case, things certainly must have been so dire there was no time even for even pen and paper.